Each great epoch of humanity has its own, its Son of God, its human archetype, whose glance, whose gestures, and whose word are the common possession of millions of the living. The whole being of a Beethoven — his sensibility, his conception of the world, the form of his intelligence and of his will, the laws of his construction, his ideology, as well as the substance of his body and his temperament — everything is representative of a certain European epoch. – Introduction
In the period from 1803 to 1806, Beethoven composed three major works that were to remain, in his own eyes, the culminating peaks of his genius: the “Eroica” Symphony, the Appassionata, and “Leonora,” his only opera (subsequently known as “Fidelio”). Each is a milestone in Beethoven’s development, and, taken as a group, they represent the most vital creative period in his career. In this book, that brief period is surveyed by one of the world’s greatest writers on music (see his Essays on Music, Dover $1.50). A Nobel Prize winner for literature, Romain Rolland understood Beethoven as few others have, and he has written about him in a way that has established this book as a classic in music appreciation and history. – nthdegree books
